Be sure to include money for handling
Claudia Rosett in the NY Times provides an interesting background on the United Nations involvement in Iraq - Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions:

President Bush's call to lift economic sanctions against Iraq could mean the end of the United Nations oil-for-food program, which has overseen the country's oil sales since 1996. Not only are France and Russia likely to object, but they may well support efforts by Secretary General Kofi Annan to modify the oil-for-food system, which is due to expire on May 12, and give it a large role in rebuilding the country. Whatever Mr. Annan's reasons for wanting to reincarnate the operation, before he makes his case there's something he needs to do: open the books.

Uh oh! Watch the roaches scatter.

The oil-for-food program is no ordinary relief effort. Not only does it involve astronomical amounts of money, it also operates with alarming secrecy. Intended to ease the human cost of economic sanctions by letting Iraq sell oil and use the profits for staples like milk and medicine, the program has morphed into big business. Since its inception, the program has overseen more than $100 billion in contracts for oil exports and relief imports combined.

It also collects a 2.2 percent commission on every barrel - more than $1 billion to date - that is supposed to cover its administrative costs. According to staff members, the program's bank accounts over the past year have held balances upward of $12 billion.

Can you say compound interest? I knew you could! And I wonder what bank is handling the dough?

As for the program's vast bank accounts, the public is told only that letters of credit are issued by a French bank, BNP Paribas. Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq, entitled to goods funded by 13 percent of the program's revenues, have been trying for some time to find out how much interest they are going to receive on $4 billion in relief they are still owed. The United Nations treasurer told me that that no outside party, not even the Kurds, gets access to those figures.

Of course, there is the spending side as well:

About a year ago, in the name of expediency, Mr. Annan was given direct authority to sign off on all goods not itemized on a special watch list. Yet shipments with Mr. Annan's go-ahead have included so-called relief items such as "boats" and boat "accessories" from France and "sport supplies" from Lebanon (sports in Iraq having been the domain of Saddam's Hussein's sadistic elder son, Uday).
...
The quantities of goods involved in shipments are confidential, and almost all descriptions on the contract lists made public by the United Nations are so generic as to be meaningless. For example, a deal with Russia approved last Nov. 19 was described on the contract papers with the enigmatic notation: "goods for resumption of project." Who are the Russian suppliers? The United Nations won't say. What were they promised in payment? That's secret.

I was at least able to confirm that the shipment of Russian TV equipment approved in February was not delivered before the war started. A press officer told me that batch didn't actually get to Iraq because United Nations processing is so slow that "it usually takes three to four months" before the purchases start to arrive.

But they have service with a smile!

Bureaucratic lags notwithstanding, putting a veil of secrecy over tens of billions of dollars in contracts is an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations. Of course, with so little paperwork made public, it is impossible to say whether there has been any malfeasance so far ? but I found nothing that would seem to contradict Gen. Tommy Franks's comment that the system should have been named the "oil-for-palace program."

But why go on? The Iraqis don't need the UN hustlers skimming off the top and goofing around as half-assed middlemen. If the UN won't lift the sanctions, we should ignore the UN.

Actually, we should do that permanently.

The Pusillanimous Poohbahs of Palo Alto
I must confess that I neglected the story of the Palo Alto city council members who were considering a ban on eye rolling and frowning, er, certain forms of nonverbal expression of disagreement. The story was filled with much rich nutty goodness, but what college town in the USA cannot provide the equivalent?

Anyhow, to make amends to my readers, here is a follow-up from Nicole C. Wong in the San Jose Mercury News - Polite Reversal:

The fuss over frowning has generated so much angst, ridicule and hate mail that the Palo Alto City Council is doing an about-face.

The council plans to dump a proposed guideline discouraging members from frowning or using other body language to show "disagreement or disgust" at public meetings.

The reversal came after a Mercury News story on the loosely worded proposal drew worldwide attention and triggered a flood of calls and angry e-mails complaining that the guideline was odd, unenforceable and almost an infringement on freedom of expression.

Among the e-mail jabs: "Perhaps you could all wear masks . . . or straitjackets."

Either would certainly be appropriate. Hmm, it might also be good for the current crop of contenders for the Democrat party presidential nomination and I'm sure it's their kind of positive action for America.

The Financial Times of London and the Gold Coast Bulletin in Australia picked up the story, as did CNN.com and other news Web sites. Radio talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly reportedly poked fun at Palo Alto's push toward politeness, too.

Councilwoman Judy Kleinberg, who headed the committee that drafted the code of conduct, says critics have called her "a Nazi" and a long list of expletives.

She says the suggestion was never intended to stifle freedom of expression. Instead, she saw it as a way to quash intimidation and show respect to whoever is speaking.

Mean people suck!

As committee chairwoman, Kleinberg has been the focal point of the criticism. But the longstanding member of the American Civil Liberties Union said she sees a silver lining in the furious phone calls and e-mails.

"I am extremely heartened to find out that so many people out there cherish the First Amendment and are vigilant about government interference in the First Amendment."

For her next trick, Judy will rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Today's Hoot
HEYWOOD JABLOME ARRESTED AT THE MASTERS

Sound it out.

You can't make this stuff up
Rich Lowry at Townhall.com - A new wine from enviros:

So many Americans are engaged in a boycott of French wine at the moment that some French importers are pressuring President Jacques Chirac to cry Uncle (Sam). But environmentalists, as ever, have different priorities than the rest of the country: They are busy protesting Napa Valley wine.

The picturesque trellised fields there make most people, especially anyone with a taste for cabernet, consider Northern California closer to heaven than any place on Earth since Eden. But the fields are maligned by greens as "alcohol farms," the environmentally catastrophic result of "the graping of the land."

Now, there's something amusing about sensitive liberals in one of the world's great bastions of progressive thinking warring among themselves. The stereotypical Northern California vineyard owner is a wealthy yuppie who appreciates the outdoors and the finer things and wants to live within an hour's drive of San Francisco, the Left Coast's left-most city. It must be discomfiting for him suddenly to be considered no better than a smoke-belching coal-plant operator.

He's picking, I'm grinning.

As the wine industry has boomed in Northern California in recent years (fueled by annoying Internet millionaires), an important shift in perception has taken place. Vineyards were once viewed as an alternative to tract housing and other nasty development, but now are themselves seen as nasty development.

That makes them vulnerable to every tool of harassment in the environmentalist arsenal: numerous lawsuits (the Sierra Club has sued the local government and growers), zealously applied federal regulations and ever-tightening local land-use and permitting rules.
...
"It has become a very involved legal, scientific and technical process that stretches over months and maybe years. It renders many properties potentially uncommercial," says Christopher Hermann, who heads the West Coast law firm Stoel Rives' wine-law group. (Yes, there is such a thing -- without it, unfortunately, vineyards wouldn't stand a chance.)

For vineyard opponents, putting property out of commission is the point. Some critics have taken to calling the growers "merchants of death," as if they're selling crack.

Typical ecoweenie "back to mud huts" tomfoolery, but I have to smile that they are pulling this on their N. California pals. Maybe some of the vineyard owners even drive SUV's! The Horror!

Conspiracy alert!
John Podhoretz in the NY Post - I confess:

OK, I'll admit it. I'm part of a vast conspiracy to control American foreign policy.

Yes, we neoconservatives have succeeded in brainwashing the leaders of the United States and Britain, using nefarious mind-controlling techniques. Those techniques include: Writing articles, circulating letters, giving speeches and appearing on television.
...
It's kind of flattering, this notion that a group of people called "neoconservatives" - a term hostile people use to refer to Jewish Republicans with hard-line foreign policy views in and out of government without using the word "Jewish" - have seized the reins of power in the United States.

Us Stone Age Republicans welcome y'all to the party.

After he talks, he could always go for a long swim
David Andelman in the NY Daily News - Don't give Italy 2nd shot at Abbas:

Don't send Abu Abbas back to Italy. They had their chance at him. And they blinked. I know. I was there.

It was late Thursday, Oct. 10, 1985. For three days, Abbas, leader of a breakaway PLO group called the Palestinian Liberation Front, had held hostage an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, carrying more than 400 passengers. Among them was a 69-year-old New York tourist in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer. In the course of the hijacking, Klinghoffer was shot and went over the side of the ship to his death.

And then he recounts the whole tawdry tale of the Italian government involvement.

The Italian government fell a couple of weeks later, after word got out about its perfidy and cowardice. Later, with the heat off, another Italian regime tried Abbas in absentia and sentenced him to life. Few thought they'd ever have to make good on it.

On Tuesday, U.S. forces finally got their hands on Abbas in Iraq. And now the Italians want him back? Basta!

Er, criminals - yeah, it was all about criminals
Robert Collier and Bill Wallace in the SF Chronicle keep a straight face in Russia now admits training Iraqi spies - But it says intent was to fight crime, terror:

Baghdad -- Russian intelligence officials have confirmed that Iraqi spies received training in specialized counterintelligence techniques in Moscow last fall -- training that appears to violate the United Nations resolution barring military and security assistance to Iraq.

A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Boris Labusov, acknowledged that Iraqi secret police agents had been trained by his agency but said the training was for nonmilitary purposes, such as fighting crime and terrorism.

Yet documents discovered in Baghdad by The Chronicle last week suggest that the spying techniques the Iraqi agents learned in Russia may have been used against foreign diplomats and civilians, raising doubt about the accuracy of Labusov's characterization.

Boris fibbing? What a shock!

U.S. Boycott Being Felt, French Say

"Certain French enterprises are suffering today from the differences that have arisen among states over the Iraqi question," the Movement of French Enterprises (Medef) said. "It is necessary to say to those who are unhappy with the positions of French diplomacy that they are free to criticize, but they must keep products and services of our enterprises outside their quarrel."

Why?

Mr. Sarandon says "It's all about me!"
Tim Robbins is well known for his inability to take what he dishes out, so he's been on his broomstick with a vengance this week after he and his common law wife lost a gig at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Since Susie's fee for her aborted United Way appearance was $20,000, I figure the dynamic duo lost at least $40,000 they could have mulcted from baseball fans.




The value to the Baseball Hall of Fame of having Tim and Susie show up to hype an old movie that is most notable for Susie screwing one of the characters on the kitchen table, seems marginal at best. Confounding it with their wingnuttery definitely looks like a bad investment. But that's not how Tim sees it. He showed up at the National Press Club yesterday to vent his considerable wrath with a few of his peacenik pals:

"While the journalists' outrage at the cancellation of our appearance in [Hall of Fame headquarters at] Cooperstown is not about my views; it is about my right to express those views. I am extremely grateful that there are those of you out there still with a fierce belief in constitutionally guaranteed rights," Mr. Robbins said.

If Tim would pass a glance over the text of the 1st Amendment, he'd notice that the first five words are "Congress shall make no law". Since there is no Tim Robbins Hot Air Prevention Act, what he's really complaining about is the fact that he doesn't get the paid platform for his bloviations that he thinks he deserves. I guess Tim and Susie are special that way. Tim, say whatever you want, but stop whining when the rest of us respond.

He's Back!
Before picking up another personal appearance check, Bubba Bill Clinton shared a few pearls of wisdom - Clinton blasts US approach to international affairs:

"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by (the) Conference Board.

No Bubba, they don't have to agree with us - they just have to stop trying to terrorize us. Try looking south from your Harlem digs and see if you notice anything missing on the skyline.

"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."

Sounds good to me.

"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."

"Let's make a deal!" - sounds like a game show. Of course, even Bubba is smart enough to know that this is a bogus straw man, but I'm sure he liked how it sounded.

"Since September 11, it looks like we can't hold two guns at the same time," Clinton said. "If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be."

Did Slick just recommend that we not fight terrorism? Back to the dustbin of history, Bubba.